Ministers to monitor purchase of maize

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, DEC. 29. The State Cabinet today decided to set up a group of four Ministers to monitor on a daily basis the purchase of potato, toor dal and maize from growers who have been adversely affected because of fall in prices of their produce.

A decision was taken by the Cabinet to effect payment for purchase of the produce to farmers through bearer cheques. The purchase will be extended upto January 5, according to Prof.B.K. Chandrashekar, Minister of State for Information and Publicity.

Briefing the press about the Cabinet decisions, the Minister said that the group comprising the Agriculture Minister, the Minister for Marketing, the Cooperation Minister and the Irrigation Minister, had been empowered to take all decisions according to the situation. The group would be assisted among others by the Finance Commissioner and the Development Commissioner.

As far as potato was concerned, Prof. Chandrashekar said it was being purchased at Rs.4.50 a kg., and the Government could dispose of more than 80 per cent of the stocks if it could sell it around Rs.3 as there was good demand. He also made it clear that there was no dearth of funds to buy the farm produce.

Prof. Chandrashekar said the Cabinet had decided to extend the benefit of definition of small and medium farmers in Dharwad District to those holding up to ten acres of land as in Belgaum District.

The Cabinet declared a new policy which makes eligible all those who fulfill the conditions prescribed by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) to apply for permission to start engineering colleges including those willing to start IT courses.

In the light of this policy, the Cabinet cleared 36 of the 72 applications for starting new engineering colleges from 2001-2002 after verification of the AICTE conditions and the availability of infrastructure.

With the acceptance of the recommendations of a Cabinet sub committee in this connection, there will be 7,960 additional seats.

Apart from this, there will be an additional 2260 IT seats following variation in seats.

The proposals cleared today were from Belgaum-one, Gulbarga-five, Bijapur-one, Dakshina Kannada-two, Mysore-two, Bidar-one. The rest were from Bangalore urban and rural districts.

The Cabinet decided to make Rs.26.25-crore allocation in the next year's annual plan towards the repayment of part of the principal and interest towards the term loan extended by financial institutions towards purchase of land for the proposed international airport at Devanahalli by the new Bangalore International Airport Company.

The Housing and Urban Development Corporation, which had sanctioned Rs.150 crores for the acquisition of land, had made a suggestion for budgetary allocation to give a sense of confidence for the lending institutions.

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